Ar(rrrghh!)ctic Monkeys

Everybody's talking about them, their new album and apparently how great it is. NME even had the audacity to say it was the 5th Greatest British album EVER just days after it's release! I'm sat here thinking "why?"

OK, couple of months ago they come out with ...on the Dancefloor, pretty catchy and I still play it from time to time but to be honest there's not that much to it. Couldn't bring myself to buy any of their other tracks. So out comes their album and I listen to a few samples expecting some new material, but bloody hell it was like listening to the same song over and over. All seem to follow a very similar formula, fast-paced catchy guitar riff and with sharply-spoken lyrics over the top. I thought to myself, maybe a 30-second clip doesn't do the song justice, but then I saw the full track time and 30-seconds was practically the entire song!

Well ok slight exaggeration, but a majority of the songs are just 2-3 minutes long. That basically tells me there's nothing more to it, one catchy lyric and one guitar riff that they couldn't even stretch out to a full-length song. Yeh I can't really judge an entire album by a few samples...but I think I'm right.

Arctic monkeys, good in some ways but seriously overhyped. As for being the fifth greatest british album of all time, ask NME again in a few months when they're bored of it.

Mock the Week!

I've been so caught up in the whole podcasting thing I'm kinda ignored making written posts. I was surfing around WiK's Blog as I often do and he managed to get tickets to see Mock the Week being filmed in London from SRO Audiences - it's completely free you just put you name down as interested and hope for the best. So I did just that and last night I got an e-mail saying I had two tickets! How cool is that?

Not sure who I'll go with, have to see who's interested. I've never acctually seen Mock the Week but I hear it's a political-quiz-comedy-thing so should be fun.

Oh speaking of podcasts, Episode 2 is well under way, few more pieces to record and there's a few sounds and jingles in this one.

Big Fish Thoughts Podcast - Take 2

OK - the first podcast was up and working for a few hours, but it doesn't look like anyone downloaded it. The myfilehut.com go back on themselves and decide to ban direct linking to mp3 files which naturally threw up a few problems. But fear not, I found, or was rather pointed to (thanks WiK) podomatic.com which *seems* happy for me to link directly to podcast episodes, creates the RSS feed and provides another website with them all listed on www.bigfishthoughts.podomatic.com

So without further ado, you can download Episode 1 or subscribe to the RSS feed or look accross to the left of the screen and see all the currently available episodes in the sidebar. Fan-dabby-tastic!

The Big Fish Thoughts Podcast!

From time to time there is an announcement so huge, so gianormous that the whole world will stop and listen. This is....not one of those moments.

Yesterday little old me sat down in front of a microphone and recorded over 10-minutes of just me speaking in what was to become the very first Big Fish Thoughts Podcast. And yet having recorded my masterpiece, why has it taken another 24hrs for me to get it to you? Well to be honest hosting and distributing directly a 10mb file (for free) was quite a challenge. I eventually found myfilehut.com which seems to be doing the job. Then getting the RSS feed to work was another kettle of fish, but I battled through thick and thin so I can now proudly announce the very first episode of the Big Fish Thoughts Podcast.

The RSS feed for your podcatcher is http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/50572/feed2.xml which should automatically get you any future episodes, but if you're podcastingly challenged the direct link to this episode is below. (I'm not sure if the title and stuff comes through on the feed, a comment on this saying one way or another would be appreciated)

Big Fish Thoughts Podcast - 16/01/06
This is first Big Fish Thoughts Podcast in which I talk about podcasting, octopi and a recent trip into town.

(Please watch my bandwidth)

Of iTunes and Podcasts

So I'm a big fan of iTunes, I hate downloading music illegally and much to the disgust of my friends am more than willing to pay for the privilege. With that out of the way...

I use the iTunes store as a good way of finding new music, the 30-sec sample of every song means you can get a good idea of the music before committing any money to it. The week's tune of the week available to download for free (from the UK store) is Silence in Space by Undertheigloo, very good tune. Either way, imagine how pleased I was when I noticed the brand-spangly new "Just for you" section that makes recommendations based on what you've bought. So I eagerly click-through to find a whole load of recommendations ranging from Bon Jovi to Gwen Steffani - not exactly my sort of stuff. Fortunately it told me what had given them the stupid notion that I may actually like Faithless, apparently it's because I bought the Scissor Sisters!

So anyway I continue to browse through recommendations based on tracks I bought well over a year and have no intention of ever listening to again, and yet I have no way to stop it making recommendations based on it. What's worse is most of the suggestions they do make are things I've already heard - I mean really, I bet almost every single person using iTunes knows if they like Robbie Williams - so why does his album keep turning up?

Anyway moving away from that.

Podcasts, not strictly iTunes but I use it to download them. Currently the No.1 podcast is The Ricky Gervais Show, now I'm not a big fan of Ricky's, The Office just annoyed me beyond belief and any mention of it just brings back memories of the time I had impersonate "the dance" (you know!) to someone who had no idea who he was. But anyway we digress, I subscribed to Ricky's podcast which found it's way to my iPod which found it's way to my jeans before I found my way to the bus.

It was the ultimate test, could I listen to 30 minutes of Ricky Gervais in public without embarrassing myself?

In short, no, I could not. Things began so well, I went probably 10 minutes raising nothing more than a smirk to myself. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere "you go into a toffee shop" - that was it, I was gone. I spontaneously laughed to myself in the middle of a bus. Everyone looked round. I continued to listen without any further embarrassment, until I was walking the final stretch to college. Lots of students around. Great.

This time I pulled my headphones out and pretended to sneeze.

Eviction threat in "respect" plan

The BBC News headline "Eviction threat in "respect" plan" struck me as damn ironic, the article is really about evicting home owners for being a nuisance. Something Blair is proposing as part of his "respect" agenda.

But the headline (unwittingly?) was also making a dig at George Galloway's time in the Celebrity Big Brother house. I see his entrance to the house as little more than an attempt to gain support for his Respect party and a chance to spread Respect ideals to the general public. After all think about why the other celebrities are there, it's little more than a chance to kickstart their career.

Maybe I'm just being cynical I thought to myself, and then today I was reading the BBC article about Galloway's disgust at sex talk in the house and this paragraph jumped out...

Respect claims Mr Galloway's discussions with housemates about the Iraq war and other political issues had not been shown.

A spokesman said the party would be sending a letter of complaint to broadcaster Channel 4.

OK, if getting Galloway's views on Iraq was not one of the prime factors for him agreeing to go into the house, why are Respect angry that they aren't being shown? It indicates, if not proves, that Respect want to use Big Brother as a soapbox for Galloway. Now in my opinion it's unacceptable for an MP to completely ignore their constituency and skip Common's debates/votes so they can spread propaganda for their party.

But Galloway's up for the public vote, there's an eviction threat for Respect's plan.

More on The National

Having not updated this for a fair few days, generally not much is going on, I do have one situation hanging over me which I'll probably post about when it's out of the way, sometime next week. But in the meantime I'll continue with my personal, evangelical, mission to get people to listen to The National. I mentioned them briefly having been to one of their concerts late last year but thought I'd go into a bit more detail.

The National are a five piece Indie-Alternative-Rock group from Brooklyn in the USA who play (believe it or not) Indie-Alternative-Rock music but with a hint of Folk thrown in. But don't let that put you off, it's more of an undertone and when you get into their stuff you'll really appreciate it. They've put out 3 full albums and an EP, the most recent album being Alligator which has been their most successful yet and got them relatively huge amounts of recognition.

One of the best things about them is there's a lot of variation within their songs, not in the way that you hate one song but love another, but in the way that compliments the other songs. Lyrically they're pretty depressing, failed love tends to be predominant but it's not put across in the typical predictable way - "I have weird memories of you, parking your car, you said, I'm overwhelmed."

Hardest thing about getting people into The National is finding one song that sums them up, nothing really can. I just tried to make a list of suggestions for National-virgins, it was around 15 songs long. If you head over to www.americanmary.com/music (official website) there are some songs available to download, Wasp's Nest and Cold Girl Fever probably sum them up best. For conveinience I've linked to them beneath. Some of my favourites by them are Lucky You, The Thrilling of Claire, American Mary and The Geese of Beverly Road.

So in essence, buy their stuff, any of it and you'll be glad you did.

Wasp Nest
Cold Girl Fever
Daughters of the Soho Riots (Video)

The New Year

So here we are on the first day of 2006, I'm feeling all philosophical so I'm going to make a boring post!

As always at the start of the year I look ahead to what's likely to happen, usually it's not much, I may have started college, sat my exams, passed my driving test or any multitude of slightly mundane things. In essence the last 17 years of my life have been pretty the same. But in 365 days time, all being well, things are going to be very different. This is one hell of a year.

I'll finish college and before going to university I'm taking a gap year - I have from July 06 right through to Sept 07 completely free. 14+ months, no commitments. The first month is going to be spent backpacking America with a friend so needless to say the first half of 2006 is going to spent running into that. I'm not planning on wasting my 14 months, I'm going to use it to travel, and travel extensively. Some people have said that's a waste.

I don't want to go to New Zealand or Australia or Thailand and spend my year getting drunk on the beach, that's not me at all. I want to break from the stereotypical backpacker routes and Africa, the Middle East and Russia. What's more is I don't want to keep hopping on a plane from city to city, life's about the journey not the destination. I want to go overland. There are quite a few gap year companies which offer trips in trucks with guides and a load of fellow-travelers so you can cross places where public transport is unsafe or non-existent...plus you've got people to keep you company.

Rather than just pass through loads of countries I'd like to get involved along the way by stopping off and completing an environmental/cultural project such as teaching in an African village or helping with research of African game. There's some amazing experiences available, but it all costs. Unfortunately my big trip is still a way off, I won't be leaving until the start of 2007 but it does mean by the end of this year everything has got to be sorted...and I've got to be able to pay for it all. I've done some calculating of costs...it's looking like this trip could cost me £8-9000. Ouch.

I'm working very hard in my part-time job at the moment and saving what I can, my new speakers were a big splash-out for me. When I'm back from America I'm going to try and get a full time job and try and hold down some shifts at the weekend - no rest for me.

So that pretty much wraps that up, all being well in just 364 sleeps time I'll be working full-time and on the verge of leaving for the trip of a life-time.

Scared doesn't even come close, nor does excited.